Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee’s call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade.

U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge Washington denies.

A Las Vegas business owner with 114 employees fired 22 workers today, apparently as a direct result of President Obama’s re-election.

…I’ve done my share of educating my employees. I never tell them which way to vote. I believe in the free system we have, I believe in the right to choose who they want to be president, but I did explain as a business owner that I have always put my employees first. I always made sure that when I went without a paycheck that [I] made sure they were paid. And I explained that I always put them first and unfortunately I’m at a point where I’m being forced to have to worry about me and my family now and a business that I built from just me to 114 employees.

“I explained to them a month ago that if Obama gets in office that the regulations for Obamacare are gonna hurt our business, and I’m gonna have to make provisions to make sure I have enough money to cover the payroll taxes, the additional health care I’m gonna have to do, and I explained that to them and I said you do what you feel like in your heart you need to do, but I’m just letting you know as a warning this is things I have to think of as a business owner.

A “mandate” for amnesty, tax increases and a historic move to limit minority power in the Senate.

Sen. Harry Reid embraced his role as a more empowered Senate majority leader Wednesday, calling for a major fiscal deal in the lame duck session while vowing a new push on immigration reform and an overhaul of filibuster rules in the new Congress.

…Speaking at a packed news conference on Capitol Hill, Reid laid out an ambitious agenda for 2013 after his party’s surprisingly decisive Senate victories and President Barack Obama’s reelection bid, saying the public gave Democrats a new mandate to raise taxes on wealthy families as part of a major year-end fiscal deal. While Reid said he’s not going to “draw lines in the sand” ahead of the year-end fiscal cliff, he insisted on higher revenues.

Don’t kid yourself; Those ripples are just going to continue to spread.